204 



I will not^ therefore,, seek the origin of the moral thought 

 in intuition/'' and hence cannot associate the moral sense 

 with such intuition. I would just as soon seek the origin of 

 my capacity of hearing in an innate or intuitive sound. The 

 moral thought is really a judgment^ the result^ like all other 

 judgments^ of reasoning, and that^ too^ of reasoning for which 

 man is responsible^ inasmuch as he ever may, within certain 

 limits, conduct that reasoning as he will. The moral idea, 

 when it is reached in the soul, finds more or less, as a rule, the 

 capacity of feeling ready to receive it as a moral sense. Just 

 as sound finds hearing, or light finds vision, so right and 

 wrong find this peculiar capacity, and in the degree in which 

 the capacity exists and the idea is presented, in that degree is 

 there the moral affection now in hand. 



Here, then, I must remark that there is nothing in man so 

 inseparably connected with morals as imll. Voluntarily the 

 moral idea may be cultivated to a high degree, or obliterated. 

 So may the moral sense, like that of hearing, or any other. 

 By certain processes a man may destroy the susceptibility of 

 any so-called outward sense, and so may he destroy that of 

 this so-called inward moral sense. Tappan says, ^' We know 

 we are exercising will when we have this presentation in the 

 consciousness; viz., certain phenomena, and I myself the 

 cause of these phenomena, either immediately or by instru- 

 mentality.^^ * Cause here does not mean a mere link in the 

 chain of occurrences. The use of the word in such a sense is 

 an absurdity. It is so because, if the word cause is equally 

 applicable to all such links, it is absurd to use it as if appli- 

 cable to one alone. John Stuart Mill says, that " a volition is 

 a moral effect which follows the corresponding moral causes 

 as certainly and invariably as physical effects follow their 

 physical causes. Whether it must do so, I acknowledge 

 myself to be entirely ignorant, be the phenomena moral or 

 physical. All I know is that it always does.'' f Mr. Mill 

 should have said, " so far as I have observed and choose to 

 remember ! '' — that is, he can Imow that effects, such as we 

 call volitions, follow what he calls their causes certainly and 

 invariably, so far as he has observed and chooses to remember 

 the facts he has noticed. It is really childish to talk as if he 

 could possibly settle the truth in relation to the whole universe, 

 and for all eternity, that volitions always follow the experiences 

 he calls their " causes.''^ He can know that in a few cases 

 which he has observed, certain volitions follow the presenta- 



Tappan On the Will, ed. London, 1860, pp. 196, 197. 

 t Examination of Sir IV. iramilton^s Philosophy, ed. 1865, p. 501. 



